


Essaying Love

by Fionavar



Series: Khemuret Xul [5]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: F/M, Love Confession, Possibly Unrequited Love, also random etymology lessons, and cultural misunderstandings, certainly not Khem, love letter, who knows at this point?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27297544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fionavar/pseuds/Fionavar
Summary: Look, sometimes even a perfectionist who is not certain she's getting things right needs to just sit down and get the work done.The work, in this case, is explaining to Harper exactly why things have been a little awkward between them recently.
Relationships: Khemuret Xul/Taliesin Harper | Taliesin Ferryman
Series: Khemuret Xul [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1912243
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3
Collections: Alternative Ethics





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [codenamecynic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/codenamecynic/gifts), [vhaerauning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vhaerauning/gifts), [bettydice (BettyKnight)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BettyKnight/gifts), [Dakoyone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dakoyone/gifts), [Jade_Sabre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Sabre/gifts).



> Canon dialogue. Khem is not nearly as articulate in speech as she is when writing, which is what happens when you make the questionable decision to play a literally superhuman genius (INT of 22) at 3am every week.

Khem hates _not knowing_ more than almost everything else, and there is so much she does not know now. Some of it is vital, like whatever Cyric is trying to do to the world that barely survived his last attempt, and the prophecy that has divided her order and in which several people seem to believe she plays a crucial role. Someone has destroyed the Skullport Enclave and drow have assumed command of the Waterdeep embassy, and she doesn’t know who or why, or even how (if?) she should respond to those events. There is Shay, who is… somewhere in Faerûn, doing something, just _not here_. Khem doesn’t resent it, except in occasional momentary flashes – she just wishes she knew whether Shay was safe, and if she was ever coming back.

The doubt that weighs heaviest on her mind could reasonably be any one of these. It would also make sense if she were instead preoccupied with purely physical discomfort. She has, after all, an axe-wound in her leg – a glancing blow, to be fair, and she got the bleeding under control quickly – a laceration and burn to her scalp, courtesy of a fire-arrow, and despite the magical resources of _Mordenkainen’s magnificent mansion_ , the clinging remnants of a vicious hangover. Limping back from the docks had been an exercise in endurance; the stairs up to her room in the inn will be a challenge of their own. At least the Golden Sail is mostly empty now. She hasn’t seen the drow all day, and Audrelias has slipped out to the privies again; Katy has already made her excuses and retired.

But Harper is staring at her, his grey eyes steady and concerned. Much as they had been last night, when he asked her questions she _didn’t know_ how to answer, before leaving her. She hadn’t expected that: it had been his idea to have a drink, and she’d agreed, thinking that perhaps enough alcohol would disorder and befuddle her mind enough that Cyric could not reach it. But, of course, when Harper says ‘drink’ there’s always an unspoken ‘and talk to me, tell me what’s wrong’, and when she hadn’t, he’d gone in search of someone who might.

He would have stayed, speech or no, if she’d asked him. Khem does know that. She hadn’t, and he’d gone, and she had methodically swallowed drink after drink. She’d intended to stagger up to her room in the inn before she passed out. She didn’t remember doing it, but she’d woken up in her bed, boots pushed under it – not where she would usually put them, but who knew what she might do when that drunk? She thought she remembered Harper’s voice, reading disproven alchemical history, but that seemed more likely to be the muddled, nonsense-dreams she usually had when poisoned or otherwise rendered incapable of her usual divinatory dreaming.

Then she had spent most of the day wracking her tired brain, bouncing words through five different languages in careful search for the ones that would convey her meaning exactly. She doesn’t know if she found them, _can’t_ know until they’re read, and she doesn’t know what will happen then, or precisely what she wants to happen.

(Except that she wants things to be _all right, w_ hatever that looks like. She wants to know that she hasn’t made a mistake, that nothing will break beyond the point of repair.)

Things don’t have to change. She doesn’t have to take the risk. She could keep her mouth shut, go upstairs and into her _mansion_ , and cast her writing into the fire.

(But if she does, she may _never_ know, and neither will Harper. He deserves the truth.)

And Harper is staring at her.

“There’s a letter,” she says, her hands tucked in her sleeves so their tension will not betray her entirely. “For you, in your room.”

“A letter?” Harper repeats, and then asks who it’s from.

This surprises a small laugh from her, one that sounds stupid in her own ears. “If I recall correctly, you thought I was quite an idiot when _I_ asked that question.” Not quite fair, perhaps, given the difference in context. Harper’s letter had been in his bag of holding, to be read if he died. It would have been highly unlikely that someone else would have written it and entrusted it to Harper for that precise set of circumstances. Hers is in ‘his room’ – and she realises that she didn’t specify the cabin of his ship in the mansion, rather than the one hired from the inn, to which almost anyone could gain access – and she’d been around the Golden Sail most of the day, and could thus have accepted delivery of a letter for him.

Harper would be quite justified, Khem thinks, in returning with the question she’d asked about _his_ letter: what could she want him to know that wouldn’t be safer delivered in person? He does not, though.

“Well, all right. I just thought it would be safe to ask. I mean, there’s not a lock of my sister’s hair in it or anything, right?”

This is probably at least half a joke, but Khem cannot always tell. “No.”

Harper accepts this without commenting, either vocally or facially, on her tendency to take things literally. His usual physical grace is overlaid with subtle tensions – she sees it in shoulders, jaw, and most of all in his hands. He knows that something is out of the ordinary, but not what or how it’s going to descend upon him. Bracing for a storm, Khem usually labels it.

“Well, all right,” he says again, but this one sounds more cautious, soothing, the way he handles Katy when her feelings seem likely to get the better of her. That’s not fair, either. Khem herself has hardly been a model of emotional control lately. “I will wait to read it until I have a quiet moment. Is that all right?”

She both hopes and fears he will find one soon. And the letter is a long one – nine pages of close writing – so probably he will want or need more time and energy than she could reasonably expect him to have at the end of a day like this, so perhaps it will not be tonight. Perhaps he has the sort of patience that can delay the gratification of curiosity at least another day… that’s another thing about him she is never sure about.

But the choice has to be his, and she will not put any sort of pressure on him even if the idea of a full day of waiting sounds very... uncomfortable. The past few hours – trying to appear her usual self in the space between finishing her writing and telling him about it - have been much more of a strain than she would have suspected possible.

“Naturally,” she says.

“Are you okay?” Harper asks. There seems to be a small disconnection between the question and the sentence that follows it. “You, um, got hurt.”

She shrugs one shoulder, demurs. “A little, but that’s all right.”

“Do you need any help?” Another pause, another uncertainty. “...with that?”

It doesn’t seem to be what he’s really asking. It might be for company, Khem thinks, looking for an excuse not to be alone. She does it too, sometimes. Under other circumstances she’d accept, as she’d sought him out with Onora’s dagger in her shoulder; he has a lot more (too much) experience with these kinds of wounds, and she generally welcomes his company anyway. But now, with the spectre of an unread letter between them... “Ah… no, thank you.

“Did I do something? Or say something?”

Oh. _There_ it is.

“What do you mean?” There is a thorny ball of dry and possibly hysteric laughter in her throat as she asks it. Nine pages of writing waiting for him, all to forestall _him_ asking her what _she_ meant. She swallows it down.

“It’s just…” Harper’s hands flex, uncertain and reaching for something solid. “Sometimes it feels like it’s a little awkward between us, and I can’t figure out why.”

Oh, _verakh_ . Of course it is, and of course he’ s noticed it, and maybe he even knows exactly why and has just been being _kind_ all this time, and she shouldn’t be embarrassed but she _is -_

“Ah…” The little noise, less a word than a deflation, sighs out of her throat. She turns her head, studies the fireplace as though the banked embers are responsible for the heat prickling across the back of her neck. “Just call that my fault. I’ll work it out.” She doesn’t know how, but she’ll have to find a way.

“I mean, that’s not what I’m trying to say.” Harper sounds careful, but not…. not _too_ careful, it’s more closely akin to the ‘stop beating yourself up, Khem’ tone than what she’d expect to hear if he really _knew_ _._ “ I’m not trying to make it anybody’s fault, I just wanted to know if there was a _reason_.”

“Umm… yes.” That ‘yes’ is pushed out by so much determination not to lie to him that it sounds bold, definite, and - naked, Khem thinks. She hurries to clothe it, finds nothing more than what she's already said. “But it’s… I think… mostly under control. I…I’ll work on it.”

Harper sighs, and this sounds like disappointment. Probably it’s too close to proclaiming it her fault, which this genuinely and completely is, it is absolutely her problem to deal with, but that’s not usually something Harper likes to hear. Unless he’s telling her he dislikes how she’s handled something. “Okay, I guess?” Which is him giving up – and it should be a relief, it’s not like she wants him to pursue this, but she cannot bear it when he sounds so defeated.

“I - I think things will be clear very shortly.”

This doesn’t seem to help. “Right. Okay. Sorry I brought it up.”

“No need,” Khem tells him, and babbles out the things she forgot to clarify. “Anyway, the door to the _mansion_ ’s in my room, the letter’s in your mansion room, but, you know, wherever works for you…” Surely he wouldn’t take it out of the _mansion_ to read in the inn, where Jarnath could be lurking around invisible and reading over his shoulder. Oh, Hells. If ever the drow lays eyes on that letter, Khem really will kill him.

“Are you going to bed now?” Harper asks, and this time it is more clearly a request for her to stay. Drink with him, talk to him, tell him what is causing this awkwardness so they can _fix_ it… she doesn’t know if they’ll be able to do that once Harper reads the letter. It might be that these stilted exchanges will be all that’s left.

One word, one _thought_ , and her ghostly pseudodragon servitor would burn the evidence. She could scribble any nonsense down on a page for him, dismiss it all later – unless he really does know.

“Yes,” she says. “Or, at least, you know. Leg wound, got to deal with that.”

“Right. Well, okay.”

And she cannot just leave it there. She _can’t._

“I’m… sorry,” Khem says, as she has said so many times since she met him.

“For what? Your leg wound?” That might be partially a joke, too. She is even less sure.

“More this whole hideously awkward conversation,” she says, hands turning palm-up and out, aimlessly, the Mulhorandi gesture half a shrug and half a declaration of neutral intent.

“That I started,” Harper points out. He isn’t going to accept her apology for this, probably back on that whole question of ‘fault’, for which he doesn’t have all the context.

She presses the point. “And I made awkward? Yes.”

He sighs – not a concession, but deciding to drop the matter entirely. Khem knows that sigh very well. “Well, I think I’ll stay down here for a while. If you need anything, you know where - even if you don’t know where I am, you can find me. So…”

“And… likewise,” Khem says. “Well, at least, you’ll know where I am.”

“You’ll hear me yelling, it’s fine,” Harper replies, dry and tired and self-deprecating as usual.

“Well, that works too,” she says, matching the tone as best she can, offering it as a small jest. _Very_ small, as most of hers tend to be. Despite herself, though, her voice is soft and sincere when she wishes him a good night.

Not a wish likely to come true, she thinks. Not if he reads her letter tonight.

“Night,” Harper says. She hears him pouring a drink as she turns away, feels him watching her limp up the stairs.


	2. The Letter

_Ahk-veleth en hyet-ptamun_ Harper, _Thraskir-nefer,_

I promised myself that I would not speak on this matter until I knew exactly what I meant, but given much of what you said last night - before I made a fool of myself - I think I must. It’s true also that even when I made that promise, I suspected I would not be able to keep it - that I would have to lay out my evidence before you, and ask you to interpret my results, and test my conclusions before I could be certain of them. I hope, then, that you forgive me for writing this letter instead of speaking to you. It has been difficult to find the words I wanted in this form; under your gaze, those silences where I try to speak stretching out endlessly, I fear I could never have made myself understood at all. 

So ink and paper will have to speak for me instead, and they have, at least, these advantages: they will give you as much time to think as you might need or want, and they will be here if ever you wish to read them again. I have, at times, found comfort in rereading the portions of your letter meant for me. I have no idea whether mine will provide anything similar to you, whether its contents will even be welcome, but the option is there. It will be, I fear, somewhat lengthy, but it seems more important to be thorough than concise. 

Probably I am trying your patience already: ‘quit stalling, Khem,’ you’re thinking. Almost. There are a few things I would ask of you. Firstly, you may disagree with some of what I write, or believe me mistaken or an idiot. I would not dispute my foolishness, but I ask you to accept my sincerity. Despite my best efforts, I may well have made errors, but I would not willingly deceive you or exaggerate, and you can imagine also I would not set down such words as these if I did not believe them myself. Secondly, I would ask you to keep this letter very safe, or else destroy it. However, I expect you may want to talk about it, or some aspects of it, with Katy, and I make no objection to that. Even show her, if you choose. Thirdly, I do not tell you this in order to provoke any particular reaction, to attempt any manipulation, or lay any obligation. Even these are requests only. Do with it all as you will: ask the questions you will almost certainly have, and I will try to answer; be silent if you choose, and I will be also. Whatever you have to say, I value your honesty more than your kindness in this: a truth that burns will heal cleanly, where a soft lie or half-truth never does. 

Last night you said that I had more power in my little finger than you had in our entire relationship. I would redress that, akh-veleth. You questioned, also, whether I was trying to deal with the many issues I felt overwhelming me, or if I were only suppressing them. You said that non-confrontation had never worked out for any of us. As is so often the case, you struck deep. But Cyric and the prophecy are too complicated and too great a problem, and I am too uncertain of what I want to truly face the attacks against my order in any meaningful fashion, too blind and afraid, and this… this I have worked on longest. You have a clear and absolute right to it. 

So. 

I love you.

That part is simple, clear if nothing else is. I could have told you as much - in fact, I very nearly have on several occasions now. So I doubt it comes as much of a surprise to you, although you may have wondered if I knew it myself. 

If I had told you that I love you, I think, you would have paused, and then asked very carefully, “And what do you mean by that, Khem?” 

And that’s where I began to struggle - like a mathematics examination that requires you to show your working, the process and the proof and the _definitions_ are so much more complicated than the central facts, the shining truth at the core. Understanding that I love you was no more than a moment’s insight. Teasing out what that _meant_ , how I would explain it when you inevitably asked… or if you argued or dismissed it, as you do when I try to tell you of your strengths and how I rely on them… that’s been the process of months, and - as previously mentioned - one which is not as solid as I wanted it to be. 

It begins, in one sense, with Torisk. We had been wrangling over the coral sword that day, as you probably remember, and then we stumbled into her lair. It was a harsh fight, during which I was blinded and helpless (and you drew me behind a rock and to relative safety), and she very nearly killed several of us before we prevailed. We dealt with her as best we could, given that she seemed to have achieved a unique form of lichdom, and you tucked the emerald that appeared to contain her soul away in your bag. 

My dream that night, Harper, was one of the clearest and most vivid I have ever had, but I shouldn’t have needed the warning. You have, I know, not forgotten my insistence on fastening that emerald into a crevice in the wall, with a fixative that requires the depth of power it took to lift vampirism from Katy to remove. Quite correctly, you thought this was a ridiculous and probably ineffective way to stop Torisk seeking revenge, if she were so inclined. It wasn’t about her. It was about my realisation that her studies possibly represented a means of lichdom within my power, and the twinned certainties that a) if I grew older and desperate to avoid death, I _would_ come for it regardless of who stood in my way, and b) at present, I _loved_ the three of you and had to make sure you were safe from me. I don’t pretend the logic entirely holds up, especially as your intent was to see the thing destroyed as soon as possible, but I panicked. 

Possibly that seems little and laughable to you, that avoiding a risk of killing you is not the same thing as love. Nevertheless, it was significant to me. Nebastis died for much less. And it was the first time I had linked the word to you or Katy - Shay being a separate case, back in Arrabar. In any case, that was where it started, the first piece I consciously had: your life is more important to me than a goal I have held all my days. 

I was afraid to inspect the matter more closely at first, and it was easy to let immediate problems like Katy’s grandfather and our first encounter with Limbo and Cyric’s vestiges cloud over it. Then, of course, you gave me your letter. I read that you loved me, _hyet-ptamun_ , and even if I only had that bare fact myself, I tried to tell you that I also loved you. You stopped me, and I determined not to speak again until I was certain of my ground. Later that evening, I began to work on the problem in earnest. 

I had Shay as an example, and everything I’ve learned since leaving Thay, the stories and definitions I’ve been given. I dissected and scrutinised and paced - and fretted and feared and doubted. There were, I determined, some elements in common in the way I felt about each of you, although they were frequently expressed differently, or present in different degrees. 

This is all very dry, I know. I may be one of the only people in the world who could bore you to death with a declaration of love. 

I don’t know how else to handle it, what else to do except tell you everything I have been so slowly discovering about myself and how I feel about you. 

So, Shay and Katy and you… I wanted, I want, to protect you from harm - and I _know_ that’s not consistent with the decisions I make every time we find ourselves in combat. I want to see you happy - and I never thought of that as a desirable state before I came west. I enjoy your company, I want to be with you - even when the work is dangerous or unpleasant, even when the conversation is difficult or we are obviously talking without agreement or understanding and hurting each other in the process. I hate it when I do, and it is so frequent. 

I _trust_ you. There is much I haven’t told you, or cannot easily shape in words, but that is my failing, and not because I fear to put that knowledge into your hands. Or - more accurately - at times I fear, because that is how I was shaped, but it is an emotional and instinctive response, not a rational one or a conscious choice. I can master those eventually, and for you, I try. Not always successfully, for I know you wish to understand my sekhme-at and I have not unfolded all of that incident and the long years that followed for you, and I still don’t know if I _can_ , but I have been trying to find words for that, too...

You make me feel safe. This, too, I would never have thought possible or desirable before. I suppose it’s not truly separate from trusting you, but I don’t guard myself against you, and I grow careless about other threats when you’re near. That I have wanted to hold you, or to be held, and have found comfort in your arms. Of that I must say more, but later. 

All these points, and still they are not quite all that I mean when I say I love Shay or Katy. I tried to dissect and analyse the emotion, and I don’t think it really answers to that sort of approach. Love seems to be the only word to contain all that I feel, all that I want to or choose to do, where my priorities are, the… foundational certainties. The constants, as you put it. Shay, as I have mentioned, was relatively simple, and Katy was recognisably parallel. I love them differently because they are different people, but I do not doubt that it _is_ love, and love of much the same character and kind. 

And then there is you. Trying to understand, that night in Tall Trees, I realised that there was a marked difference between what I felt for the other two and what I felt for you. 

It seems terribly likely that you will read that sentence and immediately rush to self-deprecation, some conclusion of how that’s fair and just because they are precious and deserving of love, and that you are not. That you don’t matter, or are worthless, or the thousand other poisonous thoughts you carry like open wounds. The ones you refuse to hear anyone refute, the ones I wish I could heal. Please, _hyet-ptamun,_ try to lay them aside for a time - especially if those thoughts had not lifted their ugly heads before I called them by name.

This part is harder to write. In all honesty, if what I have already written was all I had to tell you, I could probably have said as much weeks ago - but it is not. That difference is very real, and it is difficult to articulate, and the vulnerability it demands is a frightening thing. I trust you, which makes it _possible_ , but it is still a blind leap into darkness - and now I _am_ stalling. Forgive me. 

Harper. You reach out when I am at my most difficult and unpleasant, time after time, and ensure that I know your support is waiting when I need it. And I do, so often, and it frustrates me that you say you can do little, when all the magic Katy or I can cast is based on your foundation and in your protection. Your love. I _cried_ in front of you, because I had hurt you - and it was _safe._ I knew you wouldn’t use it against me, or laugh. Then you answered by opening your mind to me - and I know, too, how much you value your privacy. 

It means so much - not just that moment, but all the others like it since we met. I had no idea how much I wanted to be trusted, to be trustworthy, before you extended that to me. Knowing what I was, what I am. 

There is nobody else to whom I have told so much of myself. I doubt, now, if there is anyone who knows me as well as you do. Shay might have once, but she is gone: I have been long away from Thay, and I doubt my teachers would even recognise me. You _saw_ my discomfort when Katy was feeding on your blood - even in the midst of such an experience, with your sekhme-at a blade at your throat, you made time to look after me. I turn to you in doubt or need or fear; I value your advice and input, often above my own. You call me intelligent, but surely you have seen how often - particularly of late - I have depended on your judgement?

I read, in your letter, that you love me. It changed things, or made what was already changed clear. When Shay said that she loved me - a little, off-hand comment that I didn’t dare ask her to explain for some time afterwards - it disconcerted me (yes, I know, ‘doesn’t everything, Khem?’) but I accepted it as an appropriate label for what already existed between us without much difficulty. Not so when you did. I had such a strong reaction to reading it that I couldn’t really make sense of it, that the only appropriate reaction seemed to be to come and hug you. I am not a tactile person, as you know: it was dangerous at the Academy, and mostly my experiences of such things were negative or undesired. Wanting to touch someone, let alone return a physical expression of affection and gratitude for words that felt like a gift… it startled me. 

In Skullport, when you asked if it would spoil the moment if you told me that you loved me… it hit even deeper, scattered all the words out of my foolish head and the breath from my throat... 

Do you remember, in Arrabar, trying to straighten out everything I had said to hurt you? When you took the hand I offered you, and kissed it? I don’t think you truly know how intimate a gesture that is - for a wizard, for me. Or perhaps you do - I have touched very lightly on the subject before, and then there was Onora. 

Most spells - not all, but most - require a spoken incantation and hand gestures to cast. In theory, both are equally important, but in practice… it’s difficult to render someone speechless, but it’s very easy to immobilise the hands, and every wizard I have ever known or observed begins to move before they begin to chant. It becomes instinctual: if your hands are not free, you cannot protect yourself. To let someone hold your hand, or to thread your arm through theirs, requires a deep level of trust. I will walk defenceless, you are telling them, because I need no defence while you are with me. 

Even more than that, the hands become… symbolic, in a way. You can see how they represent magic already. Wizards express their emotions in their hands: they’re much clearer to read and less misleading than the face. They are also, as you might extrapolate, emblematic of strength and of desire. So, then, to kiss one would be… no. I cannot summarise how deep such a gesture goes, but I can give you a parallel. You sleep tangled about Katy - that speaks of utter vulnerability, trust, and a kind of intimacy which most people associate with lovers alone. It is not dissimilar. 

Nobody else has ever tried to kiss my hand. I would have let nobody else come so close. I know that you do not weigh these things as I do, that you probably had very little idea. My point is not to change what you gave, but explain what I did. You should know, too, that I have watched your hands, with their strength and finesse, those terrible scars across your knuckles, and wanted to return the gesture. 

It is not an easy thing, unravelling so many years of training to accept that you love someone, learning how to live with it and trying to show others what they truly mean to you. I know I do poorly at it, and we are so often upset or hurting from wounds the other has inflicted. You tell me it is how these things go, that I should look more kindly on my mistakes, and I haven’t the experience to disagree. Change is painful, possibly more so when most necessary. You are perhaps the greatest force for that change in my life. It is why, for some time in the privacy of my mind, and once on a battlefield, and numerous times here, I have called you _hyet-ptamun_. 

It is not, I admit, the most flattering endearment imaginable. ‘ _Hyet’_ is a thorn. ‘ _Ptamun’_ is not so directly translatable, although it refers literally to the throat. Common has ‘heart’, which serves literally for the organ that pumps blood and metaphorically for the emotional centre - and, in both senses, reflects vulnerability. In Mulhorandi, we localise the emotions in the throat: the long breaths drawn to calm feelings, or the shakiness that reveals them; the tightness of sorrow; the words played on the vocal cords and carried on the breath. A thorn in the throat, then, can be painful, and you can never forget its presence: it inevitably changes everything that passes it. But if it were to be removed - well, if it has been there long enough, it leaves a hole that will not heal. If it has not, then the wound will bleed, possibly enough that one would die of it. 

I don’t imagine you’ll like the term. You need not hear it, if you wish - or, at least, I will try. I cannot guarantee what might slip out when you throw yourself back into a battle, still bleeding from a wound that almost killed you. 

All, this, then, rambling and disordered and messy, probably unconvincing - especially if you do not wish to be convinced - to say that I love Katy and Shay, but I believe that I am in love with you. 

The possibility suggested itself that very first night in Tall Trees, trying to work out exactly what was so different in how I felt about you. I did not like it, as you might imagine - I could not imagine admitting that anyone held so much over me - but I could not dismiss it entirely. As time went by, it only seemed more and more like the truth. It scared me, and I felt stupid and doubtful and hideously awkward, and I won’t deny that at times I wished it were otherwise. Of course I don’t really know how to handle it, and - as I say - I have no idea whether this is something you want to hear, or how it might change things. 

Nevertheless, Harper, I love you, and as far as I can make any sense of the muddle in my throat and my mind, I am in love with you. Whatever transpires, I am glad to have met you and learned to love you. Forgive the cowardice and uncertainty that wrote these pages instead of telling you directly. Possibly, having written so much and come to certainty in the writing, I can do better. If you wish it. 

It may occur to you, having read so much, that perhaps some form of jealousy has been at work in the way I deal with your flirtation. Certainly I wondered the same when I learned I had barred Onora from your room in the _mansion,_ and at her death. Let me set this clear, too, while I am writing a document as honest and dangerous as it can possibly be, full of so many things I probably could not voice, that I do not think that is or was the case. I have, in some moments, desired you: but it is only _tsu-yareth._ I think the usual Common translation is ‘yearning’, but it is a poor one. 

Literally it means ‘star-hunger’, but that is thin, too. I can illustrate, I think. Go out on a clear night and look up at the stars. Look long, and if you are susceptible, your throat will begin to ache with a strange longing for those beautiful, distant sparks of light. You _want,_ and other things pall while _tsu-yareth_ holds you. But it is a temporary phenomenon, and a very manageable one. You go inside, or you fall asleep, and in sunlight or firelight, you recollect yourself. Oh, they are pretty enough, but what do you really want them _for?_ You cannot hold them or keep them; they are not part of your world. You could fly so high the air died away, and come no nearer. If, by some mad chance, you _could_ reach them - what then? They’re giant balls of flame infested with fire elementals. Probably you would be consumed by the heat, but even if you survive - what then? The attempt is foolish; there’s nothing to be gained by it and too much to lose. No. Enjoy the starlight while you are at the proper distance to appreciate it, and let the _tsu-yareth_ pass. If it bothers you, learn to keep your eyes on the ground. 

We manage these matters very differently, I know. You have no shortage of lovers, and you deal with them lightly and with laughter: you seem to feel no fear of letting others know of your attachments. Perhaps, then, I misspeak - and I intend to convey no disapproval or offence - but I never thought you wanted _me_ , specifically. You flirted initially because it’s part of your usual approach; you continued when it was clear nothing would come of it because you found my reaction amusing; you stopped when I told you how much I hated it. _Tsu-yareth_ or general comportment are not reason enough to give those differences power enough to really hurt, or to so dramatically upset a balance it has taken us two years to find. 

I think there is one more point I need to address. Thay and its opportunities are only for those who can sacrifice all other considerations to gain them. As I love my three friends and therefore have other ties, I consider it unlikely I will ever go back. Even if by some mischance, the path ahead leads there, it is no longer my home. What this means for my place in the order is currently uncertain, but you said once that I could always have a home where you are. While I am welcome, _akh-veleth_ , I will remain with you. 

_Only_ while I am welcome. I want you to be selfish about this, for there’s much honesty in selfishness, if there is nothing else that is accounted a virtue this far from Thay. You do so much for Katy and me, and seem to want so little for yourself. I know I am… difficult, and frequently unpleasant, and often carelessly cruel, or deliberately so. I can imagine - although I hope I am wrong - that this entire letter may represent another burden added to those you shoulder for others. But part of our partnership has always been _trying_ to honour your right to choose, and for that you need the relevant information. You told me once that love of this kind was at least partially a choice. 

I have made mine - not easily, perhaps, but when did I ever make up my mind without agonising over every conceivable aspect and possibility? I am content to have it so, save for this: many choices can be refashioned once made. If you wish, Harper, if you would choose it, only tell me so. I will see if what was forged can be broken. 

Until such time, _hyet-ptamun_ , I love you and remain in love with you. 

Khem


	3. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More canon dialogue, with some repeats and non-lexicals straightened out. 
> 
> 'abesh-Re' is the made-up Thayan word for the made-up kestrel Khem is being.

The sky above Khem’s observatory has always been calm: the stars burning bright and unfamiliar, more colourful than the whitefire stars of Faerûn’s night. Not tonight. The storm has already rolled in, obedient to her will, by the time Khem makes it up the final steps. The thunder laughs, deep and secure in its power; the lightning dances and darts between the heavy clouds; and the wind hurls rain hard enough to sting when she turns her face up to survey her work.

It is perfect, exactly what she wanted – how could it be anything less? - and her hands and voice shape a familiar spell. Aching flesh looses its hold, the fearful scurrying thoughts are locked behind a kestrel’s focus, and Khem stretches out the vivid red wings of the _abesh-Re_. The storm catches her instantly, tumbling her out over the parapet. It takes all of her strength and skill to straighten herself out into flight, to find the bird’s balance between the elemental forces at play in the sky. They are all greater than she, heedless of the speck of life in their midst; any one of them, if properly directed, could mean her death – but she is small, and swift, and strong, and flight is what she is _made_ for.

What she really is, in the end.

Let the thunder deafen her, let the lightning blind. Let it burn. Let the winds toss her carelessly about the sky, let the rain soak her. She will throw herself into the heart of the storm, and she will survive. The shrill of her pulse is the power of her wings, and while she flies, nothing else matters.

“Uh… is now a bad time?”

The words, human and distant, nevertheless cut through the fury of the storm and the concentration of the bird. Harper, Khem recognises, remembering within the _abesh-Re_ exactly why she sought out the observatory, what she was hiding from. She folds her wings, dives down through the storm to the tower top where Harper stands. One thought deals with the kestrel’s momentum and its form alike, leaving her steady on her own feet, and a second creates a clear ceiling, forbidding the rain to fall on them, softening the sound of the storm. These are deliberate, thoughts firmly and actively thought, unlike the crowd of questions and doubts that gibber and writhe about her mind, making it very difficult for Khem to raise her head.

“Hi!” Harper says. It sounds… carefully bright. She knows the tone well.

“Hi,” Khem replies. She can manage that much. She can even look at him, although she cannot quite meet his eyes. His hands are… less mobile than usual. Opaque.

“You okay?”

That’s a question with no meaningful answer. “Reasonably…?”

“Look, I won’t keep you in suspense. I read the letter.”

“Ah.” That silences a few of the questions rioting in her skull, although the others easily compensate and more pop into existence. “All right.”

“I don’t want to… overstep, or anything…” Harper says tentatively, and stretches out his arms in an invitation Khem has learned to recognise: even to welcome. She steps into his embrace, and his arms close about her, becoming not a cage but a small sanctuary. Khem holds onto him in turn, less awkwardly as more questions and doubts dissipate away on her sigh. She should have had more trust. There is no telling where the road ahead of them leads, what she wants or Harper does, but they are _all right._

She loves him, and he knows it, and they are _all right_.

The familiar prickle of unease – she is not free to move, someone is close enough to hurt her – surfaces eventually, of course, and although Khem ignores its unwanted voice, Harper seems to hear it anyway. He eases away, save for his hands, resting gently on her shoulders, and his gaze, intent on her own. “So I need some time to think about what you wrote,” he says, almost as Khem might have said it herself, had their positions been reversed. “But if I’ve learned anything about love, it’s that it doesn’t help to not acknowledge it.”

There’s a name behind that, Khem thinks, an ocean-eyed serpent, a sekhme-at.

“So I figured that was the very least I could do.”

“Thank you,” Khem says, the words so soft she hardly recognises them as her own.

“And I just want to make this clear, Khem, this doesn’t change anything really. It doesn’t change that I love you-” and Khem swallows hard, the words heavier in her throat every time he says them – “it just might change _how_ , so… try not to worry, okay?”

She had spent so many years at the Academy trying not to be seen, or hiding behind the smokescreen of a manufactured reputation. It had never worked very well with Harper. That had scared her, once. “Look… you’ve already made things a lot easier than I was expecting, ~~”~~ no, that wasn’t the right word, she had nothing more than vague dread of what might happen once she’d answered his inevitable ‘And what do you mean by that, Khem?’. “- as much as I was expecting anything, which I wasn’t really -”

“Well, I _am_ easy, so…”

It takes her a long moment to parse that into a euphemism for sexual availability, and by the time she’s worked out why, and that Harper’s sudden defaulting into sexual humour, when he usually tries to avoid troubling her with such things, means that he is nowhere near as certain of himself as he is trying to appear, Harper has sighed, dropping his hands from her shoulders and taking another step back. Giving her room.

“Right, bad joke. Um. Do you need anything?” Khem shakes her head, and Harper continues. “Is it okay if I take some time to think about this? Everything?”

Khem smiles, then. “Of course. _I_ did.” It is… reassuring, really, a relief. If he’s going to think, then he is willing to take her seriously, and there is likely to be time to adjust to whatever changes his conclusions might – or might not – bring. They are, and they will somehow be, _all right_.

“Well, I appreciate your honesty…"

“That I usually have, sooner or later,” Khem says, offering the words lightly. “Answers are harder.”

“Well, it’s not like I have those either,” Harper says, and sighs. “Do you -”

“Are you all right?” Khem asks: just because _they’re_ all right doesn’t mean Harper is. She knows the words are essentially meaningless. It’s not a question Harper ever answers in the negative, even when he’s clearly lying. But here it stands in place of so many things she wants to ask, but will not. He needs time, and it’s not fair to ask if he _minds_ her letter, the fact of it or that she didn’t just _tell_ him; if knowing that she’s in love with him is unwelcome; what he knew or suspected before he read it.

“Yes,” Harper answers, because he always does. It sounds mostly true. “I just need to think, you know I’m not the smartest guy all the time… Do you want your letter back?”

The question doesn’t make sense for a moment, and Khem fumbles over half-formed words and fragments of sentences that will not coalesce into sense before she finds a question to return. “Do you want it?” This isn’t quite right, because ‘do’ should have been ‘don’t’, but Common can usually handle that sort of error, and it still makes grammatical sense…

“Under most circumstances, yes,” Harper says, and something that Khem belatedly recognises as a sharp knot of nascent rejection relaxes again. “It just seems like… it’s just very personal, and I know you tend to have concerns about that sort of thing, so if it would make you more comfortable…?”

It is only about security, then, her request to either keep her letter safe or else destroy it. Of course she could take additional precautions, but probably it is safe enough in the bag of holding, where she anticipates Harper will keep it. A spy would need to empty the bag completely, or else have a very good idea of what they were looking for – would have to know sensitive material existed in the first place – to successfully fish it out of the bag’s enchantments. It’s a risk she’s willing to take, or else she would never have written the letter on parchment that could exist outside her _mansion_ spell.

Besides… if Harper intends to think about her letter, it will be much easier if he _has_ it. She wrote it for him to keep, to reread if he ever wanted, to give him time to consider and come to certainty. Khem shakes her head. “It’s for you.”

“And you really don’t mind if I discuss this with Katy?”

Khem smiles again, almost laughs: he is so uncertain that she really meant to give permission on that point. But she trusts Katy, too, and it would be unnecessarily cruel to deny him the help of the person he loves and trusts above any other as he thinks the matter through. Besides, if it had been kept from Katy and she’d later learned it – well, Khem isn’t sure what sort of response might be dictated by those ridiculous novels Katy reads, but a murder attempt seems plausible. Or, at the least, a solid week of yelling.

“Look, I know you two. Sooner or later, everything that affects one of you affects the other.”

“Thanks,” Harper says, looking genuinely relieved, and Khem demurs: it is a little thing, after all. “Well, I will let you get back to your…” Harper glances upward, where rain falls from dark clouds and never touches them, “…storm, I guess?”

“It’s a good way to switch the mind off for a little,” Khem says, shrugging: she hardly needs to explain why she might have wanted that. “You can’t think too hard when you’re trying – you know – flight, in itself, is demanding…”

“Well, ka-kaw?” which seems to be an imitation of the cry of the giant eagle. Of course: given how often Khem has _polymorphed_ him into that form, she hardly needs to explain flying to him either.

Harper reaches out to pat her shoulder, then wince slightly and repeat the gesture a little more confidently. “I’ll – I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Sleep well, if you can.” A very qualified wish, and one that Khem feels is about as awkward as his first shoulder pat. Nevertheless Harper accepts it, and returns it before he leaves.

Another moment, and Khem is gone, too. A small kestrel spirals up from her place, seeking not to battle the storm, but to win through to the sunlight high above.


End file.
